Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(44)
“I’m not trying to step on any toes, here, man. Honest.” Cass lifted his hands, stepping back when Kona moved forward.
“Back. Off,” he repeated, voice low, sinister.
“Kona, please,” Keira said, jerking her gaze to her husband. “Now is not the…”
“He’s moving!” Koa shouted, stepping closer to the television, moving to the side when we all surrounded it.
“Mark?” Keira said when her phone chimed once. “Oh, Kenny. Tell me. Okay…” and then she left the room with Kona trailing behind her.
All around us the urgency lessened, though it didn’t quite leave completely. Ransom’s teammates had not moved, each one taking a knee, heads bowed as he was looked over. It was strange and frightening to see all those huge, sweaty men motionless, in a game where so much adrenaline pumped right along with the urgency to win. But Ransom had always been loyal to his teammates. They were a family and generally loved each other. This display of solidarity wasn’t a shock.
Holding my middle, arms tight, attention focused, I kept still, barely breathing as I watched that screen. Koa had been right, Ransom was moving, but he still lay flat on his back, his face and chest blocked from the cameras by the doctors working on him. One physician moved his hands to Ransom’s face, turning his neck while another went to his ankle, tenderly moving his foot side to side.
Around me, the small group seemed to relax. The announcers, desperate to fill the dead air, were babbling on about how it was a good sign that Ransom was moving. Koa and Mack sat back down and Cass took his girl from the room, out onto the patio. I’d somehow lost Ethan in the fear and anticipation but that, too, didn’t really register. I couldn’t move. There was nothing for it. My legs locked tight, my heart sputtered and my gut twisted. Then, the trainers and doctors lifted Ransom up and he staggered a bit getting to his feet, wincing when the camera zoomed in on his face.
I recognized the symptoms. God, how many times had I’d seen Ransom suffering from a concussion? There was no need to hear the news Kenny would give Keira and Kona, or listen to the speculation on the part of the announcers. Blood had begun to dry on Ransom’s upper lip. Some of it had splattered onto the turquoise collar of his jersey and smeared across the white and orange letters on his chest.
Walking to the small golf cart that had pulled up, Ransom wobbled a few steps even with a trainer supporting him under each shoulder. But my focus remained on his face. There was more than pain transforming his features. My chest felt tight and my stomach ached because I felt it right alongside him too. It wasn’t my career or health in jeopardy. Modi, it wasn’t even my man’s career or health in jeopardy and the realization of that, as ridiculous as it sounded, left me a little staggered.
After a lifetime, it seemed, with several commercials playing and the people around me relaxing even further, finally, Keira returned, no longer on her phone. Behind her Kona motioned for Brian to follow him in the kitchen. But Keira stood in front of me, still looking worried, but less pale than she had just twenty minutes before.
“Aly…”
“Is he okay? Does Kenny know anything at all?” Keira shook her head, opened her mouth to answer but in my excitement, my sudden consuming worry, I interrupted her. “Do you think we can get an emergency flight? Maybe Kona can ask the owners…” and then Ethan reappeared, standing next to me. The flush of realization came before I looked at him, just as Keira’s eyebrows lifted and she recovered her surprise. “I…I’m sorry,” I said, not sure who I should apologize to.
“Aly,” Keira amended, grabbing my hand. “We really need someone to stay with the kids.”
“Of course.” Shaking my head, I waved my hand, dismissing her, feeling like an idiot. “Whatever you need, Keira.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” She grabbed me in a hug. “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
For the next half hour Keira and Kona moved around the lake house with purpose, leaving directions for Koa and Makana, packing and leaving me notes and numbers I already had. Mack leaned against me as her parents pulled out of the drive, holding my waist in a death grip.
“Why don’t I help you clear things away?” Ethan asked and his voice surprised me. It was as though he’d come from the shadows, a light I’d forgotten to switch off.
“Yeah,” I told him, clearing my throat as I led Makana inside. “That’s a good idea.”
It would give me something to do. It would keep me from the worry over Ransom and how desperately I wished I was boarding that plane with Keira and Kona.
Broken
Not
Bent
Bound
Not
Bind-less
A prison of my own making.
Trapped inside myself.
Nine
A hundred times a day, I heard Aly’s warning.
“One day you aren’t going to walk away from the field.”
Today I didn’t.
We are conditioned early. Set into our bones is that old, primitive voice that demands we prove we are the fittest, the surest, the bravest of all. We are warriors on that field, dancing to a song that lives inside our DNA. It’s the same angry, primal call that sends men into action, that makes us fight and bleed and crawl to victory because we must. It began drumming in my head the day Liam Johnson tried convincing me I wasn’t big enough to wear his brother’s shoulder pads. Six years old and nearly as tall as my mother, I wore those pads because Liam said I couldn’t.